The next morning I proceeded to Hiero, the chief seat of the worship of Æsculapius. Foundations of temples, baths, and aqueducts; of a theatre, a stadium, and various other buildings, announce its former magnificence; but in so wild and remote a place, it seems surprising that nothing but foundations should remain. The situation occupies part of an elevated valley, of varied surface, and surrounded by mountains, neither high, bold, nor woody, but which by contrast must have heightened the effect of the display of architecture beneath them.
One of the first objects which fixed my attention was a spring bubbling up through sand, and throwing up a little milky cloud when disturbed, perhaps from a portion of pipeclay in the soil; for it had no mineral taste or smell. One supposes that there must have been a medicinal spring of some sort, to give reputation to the place, and make it appropriate to the worship of the god of medicine; but if any such existed, it is now buried under the heaps of rubbish, for besides this spring, the only water I could find was a little rill descending from the mountains, equally destitute of mineral appearances, but warm, and tasting of decomposed vegetable matter, as if exposed to the air and sun in a course of some length. By the existing remains of aqueducts tending towards this streamlet, it seems to have supplied the water of the baths and cisterns. I next visited a large bath, which appears to have been originally of stone, but repaired with brick. The arch is used in both parts. The aqueduct which supplied it, is a small square conduit with a semicircular channel on the lower stone, calculated for a very small current of water: below this ruin we again met with evidences of baths and aqueducts. Pausanias mentions the theatre as the most beautiful in Greece, but in whatever its superiority may have consisted, it has now disappeared, and we see only a hollow on the side of the mountain, surrounded by seats of a red and white marble, and half overgrown with bushes. Some foundations of the proscenium may be observed, but they are merely indications that something once stood there, and without digging it would not be possible to make out even its ground plan. Passing among fragments, and over numerous old foundations, we arrive at the Stadium, which is also a hollow, but of a different shape; and the seats do not remain. At some distance, and not very far from my first entrance into this valley, is an extensive marble pavement, which apparently once belonged to a large temple, but there is no vestige either of walls or columns. Some Roman antiquities in the lower part closed my observations. On the road hence to Lycourió there are some inscriptions, and fragments of mouldings. An extremely beautiful ornament of a large size remains among the fragments of Hiero, and there is abundance of pieces of tiles, many of which were painted with frets, or with leaves. There is also at Agia Marina, near Lycourió, a little bit of Cyclopean masonry, which might be taken for a pyramid, but for an irregularity on the south side. It was probably a tomb.